Though I say “yes I see”, no I really don't see (is my smiley face still on?): beer (brewing and drinking), camping, eating, hugging trees, kiting, fishing, ironing, hiking, geocaching and munzing, painting (oils, emulsion and gloss), ranting, recording history as I see it. Days with family, days with friends, days with granddogs. Always an opinion (always wrong), and rarely a dull moment. Welcome to my world... remember - history is written by those who make the effort to write it.

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16 June 2009 (Tuesday) - A Day Off

I’d decided to take today as a day off work, as everyone else seems to after Teston. I had planned a lie in, but “Daddies Little Angel (TM)” was on the phone before 8am. Having run the washing machine ragged overnight, I put out more laundry that I’ve got pegs this morning, and then went to park my car outside the house, as we had been faithfully promised the road works would have been finished. They weren’t. As I wandered up to post this week’s letter to the chokey I saw quite a few people in high-vis jackets leaning on shovels having a conversation with a chap in a lorry, but not a lot else was going on.

I had a mooch up to town. To the Three shop to ask about my mobile phone’s battery. Once charged, it lasts for about a day at most. The disinterested bimbo wasn’t overly interested, and grumbled that they didn’t sell batteries. When I asked her where I might get some she muttered something about the dodgy mobile phone stall in the local market. That was helpful of her (!) I then looked around HMV until they turned the music on. I wish they wouldn’t. It doesn’t have to be so loud that it hurts, does it? Then I got some pound coins for Thursday’s trip to the chokey, got myself a McBananaShake, and mooched back home again. The sun was shining; it was a baking hot day. And I lost count of the amount of old men shuffling round clearly wearing vest, shirt, cardigan, blazer and thick coat.

And so home where I ordered a new phone battery from eBay. And then I updated the kite club’s website with the weekend’s adventures. I’m not really sure why we still go through the motions of having a kite club web site. We only ever formed a “proper” kite club to get kiting insurance, and we gave up that policy about five years ago. For all that we still occasionally fly kites and camp at festivals, the kite club itself has been moribund for years. Still, I suppose it doesn’t hurt to keep the website going. And then whilst surfing the net I found this picture

It’s an aerial photo of the Teston weekend I’ve just returned from. Can you see me? …. No – I can’t either. I’ve been given the original – all 4Mb worth. On that one I can make out the top box on my car and I think I can see Lisa. Meanwhile over on Facebook I’ve uploaded an album of photos of the weekend at Teston.

I then had yet another call from someone from BT with a totally unintelligible accent trying to sell me their Broadband package. They would not take “Get Stuffed” for an answer, and I phoned BT to complain – after all, I’ve registered with them that I don’t want telesales calls, and here they are hawking their tat themselves. They had a rather convoluted switchboard with umpteen different choices. Eventually I got through to a totally uninterested Sonia, who maintained that I wasn’t a BT customer and she hung up on me. So I tried again and got someone who assured me I was a BT customer, and that the nuisance calls would stop. A couple of hours later BT phoned again trying to sell me their Broadband. I think I was less than polite with the chap.

I realised it was quiet outside – would you believe it – the workmen were finishing up. I went out and chatted with the chap sweeping the road. The told me that he contractors get more money for the more work that they take on. They don’t seem to get paid on results, but on the promises they make. Regardless of any ability they might have to keep those promises. He apologised for how long the work had taken – and regaled me with a list of the incompetence of the various teams who’d worked up the road in the last six months. It would seem that very few had escaped being sacked for incompetence. But my car is now outside the house. If only it could have been there a week ago.

I then devised another twenty two clues for next week’s crossword to the chokey. “chippopotamus - A generously-proportioned lady who honestly just eats like a mouse but whose glands scoff vast quantities of deep-fried spuds. (13)” I’m not sure how many more of these I can devise…